Allplan FT takes object-oriented approach to AEC projects

star rating: 5 stars out of 5pros: More nimble than ever before; includes tools
for all stages of the AEC design process; allows multiple
concurrent users; all icons relating to all the modules' drawing
and calculation tools appear on screen.cons: Interface still not pure Windows (in particular,
no VBA or ActiveX support); project file system dialog boxes
take some getting used to.list price: $4,995

File translation is strong in both directions,
although object intelligence tends to be lost. Lots of extras
(even terrain modeling) are included at no extra charge for
U.S. customers. This complete package eliminates the need
for add-on programs. You'll have to go back to using a hardware
lock, however, and the interface is more suited to power drafters
than occasional designers.

With
each new upgrade, Allplan becomes easier for drafters to use. Allplan
FT v16.2, released this summer, continues the trend. It is faster than
its predecessor (more on this later) and has a cleaner on-screen look
with more room for drawing. But its feature-laden, not-quite-Windows interface
and its comprehensive file handling system remain barriers to the casual
CAD userthe designer who spends only 10% to 15% of his or her time
in front of the tube. Allplan can convert a scanned sketch into a vector
drawing, and add-on hardware lets you sketch directly on the screen with
a wand. But opening a clean screen for drawing and opening a drawing file
from a project require special non-Windows commands. Setting up drawing
files and layers can require some classroom training, or at least a close
read of the tutorial.

One example of how things can be easier and harder at the same time:
I quickly fell in love with the new mouse navigation commands. The moves
you make most are now just a click away, especially with a three-button
mouse. To pan, click the middle button when no tool is active. The screen
window moves in the direction you drag. Double-clicking the middle button
zooms to the drawing extents (that is, sets the view so that all of the
drawing is visible on the screen). Clicking on an element when a drawing-element
tool is active sets the linear snap points. When the tool for selecting
elements is active, middle-clicking in two corners of an imaginary box
on-screen selects all of the elements within the box. You can then use
Allplan's filter assistant to pick the elements you want. Click with the
middle button, then the right button, to select items with the same pen
thickness or linetype as what you clicked on.

A single mouse click is all it takes to back out of full-screen mode
to standard control mode. But let's face it the casual user is not
going to know those commands. I'll forget them myself once I'm no longer
immersed in the program's features. Standard scroll bars at the edges
of the window would be useful.

Figure 1. Allplan's main drawing screen, with
tools menu activated.

Speed statistics
In raw speed, v16.2 seems 1020% faster than v15, which Cadalyst
reviewed in February 2000. I could not perform a firm benchmark because I reviewed v15 on a slower
workstation and a different operating system (Windows NT 4.0 at 450MHz
with 256MB of RAM).

For this review, I ran Windows 2000 at 1.6GHz and 512MB, a setup with
more than twice the raw throughput. Tools pop up nicely, with a delay
of a half-second the first time you use a new module in a session. Modules
stay in memory thereafter and pop up instantly. Zooms and screen refreshes
also seem faster, as Nemetschek claims. A Windows XP version of Allplan
(v16.3) should be ready by the time you read this.

Figure 2. Formats are easy to catalog and
change. Here we modify pen colors and weights for walls.

Allplan essentials
AllPlan is the top architectural design progam in Germany. Based on a
single 3D object-oriented database, it creates and maintains the relationship
between 2D and 3D. Plans, elevations, sections, and other views are different
representations of the same 3D data. You can even have 2D and 3D views
open at the same time. AllPlan also uses the 3D database to automatically
generate area calcuations, door and window schedules, and materials reports.
This review focuses on features added since our February 2000 review.

New features
You can customize the Allplan text editor as required. It remembers the
settings when you sign on again. In fact, Allplan seems to remember all
settings.

Clipboard functionality is also improved. You can cut, copy, and paste
elements from file to file within a project or to and from other applications
with the Windows clipboard.

Users have more control over Allplan layers, and it's easier to affect
the display of elements on passive layers. A new setting controls layer
visibility and how you activate layers.

Figure 3. Allplan provides these options for
architectural drawing. Note that the close box (X) on the upper right
corner is not functional because Windows is not fully implemented.

If you like to present your models inserted into an existing view, you'll
like the new 3D Model in Photo tool. You tell the software an area where
a 3D model and a bitmap match. You then use this view to render an image
with the Rendering tool. The option to save and reload views after they
have been successfully fitted into the image is new in v16.2.

Allplan lets you use scanned images as the basis for 2D and 3D CAD work.
Display a scanned image of a room on the screen and use it to calculate
the area of the structure or draw new elements to add to the structure.
You can also save scanned images, or sections of them, as symbols.

An integrated interface connects to the Docuware archiving system for
storing the current status of planning data in an archive. You no longer
need to switch between different programs.

Allplan has a strong project file system. A project is a directory folder
that contains all of the files for a project or part of a project. Each
project can have a thousand file sets, each with 128 drawings. Project
maximum is 3,000 drawings. Plotter and printer files don't count against
that totalyou can have 1,000 more of them. Administrative tools
let you set file access controls and implement standards at the office,
project, and personal levels.

Figure 4. This dialog box specifies what happens
when elements intersect. It's fairly deep in the menu system, but
shortcut keystrokes and mouse clicks get you there faster.

As we noted in greater detail in our review of v15, you can display and
edit up to 40 files at once. The one you are actually editing is locked
so that others can't change it. AllPlan's network administration tools
allow many users to work on the same project at the same time.

Drawing files can be layered or unlayered. The unlayered structure is
particularly useful when many users must collaborate at the same time.
Each person draws in a separate file rather than on separate layers of
the same file. Updates reflect on all workstations when files are saved.
Version 16.2 makes this easier to handle, because you can now easily copy
whole files into layers when things quiet down.

You find your way around project files with the ProjectPilot module.
Its arrangement is somewhat similar to Windows Explorer, although the
file icons look superficially different. You can sort the long lists of
drawings and file sets alphabetically by name or by number. You can search
for specific items by filtering, but that command appears on the main
menu, not through ProjectPilot. You can copy and move documents back and
forth by dragging and dropping.

As with many applications, right-clicking on an element opens a menu
that contains tools specific to editing that element. Allplan is particularly
complete in what shows up on its right-click menus. They can each contain
15 or 20 commands.

The American version of Allplan provides many commands and icons because
it includes, at no extra charge, modules for landscaping and city planning,
construction engineering, and so forth. As you switch from module to module,
toolbars specific to the module appear on screen. It was easier, even
on the limited real estate of a 19" monitor, to simply tell Allplan
to load them all.

Allplan ships with plenty of symbols. You can buy more libraries and,
as you'd expect, you can turn parts of your drawings into symbols as well.
Allplan's clever smart symbol technology lets you tell the system how
to display the symbol at various scales and in 2D or 3D. With the Smart
Symbol Designer, you define smart window and door symbols in a dialog
box. You click on the opening to transfer the geometric data and then
define the frame, posts, sashes, and so forth. Allplan automatically generates
representations of the symbol for different scales. The symbols adjust
to different opening sizes.

Figure 6. You navigate through the Project
Pilot window to select items to work on. This dialog box is fully
Windows compatible.

If you place a symbol in a drawing, the first instance is the actual
symbol itself. The drawing does not check the library for updates each
time it loads, so modifying the symbol in the library does not automatically
change it in the drawing. As the window symbol adjusts to its opening,
for example, only the size of the panes changes. The arrangement of the
sashes stays the same. In effect, the system creates a "local project-specific"
symbol library.

There's also a nice detailing feature with which you define a drawing
area that can be displayed at different scales. The large-scale detail
is updated automatically when you make changes in the base drawing.

You draw in 2D most of the time with Allplan, but you can set the system
to consider each item's third dimension. The 3D modeling module also works
well, with good primitive shapes and fast Booleans. Once you turn part
of a project into 3D, you can shade it and fly around it. The animation
module can even save a walk-through or fly-by as a portable AVI file to
view in any Web browser. Interestingly enough, most of the time the shadows
and highlights are vectors, not bitmaps, even in 2D.

Figure 7. The symbols library shows 3D symbols.
The interface area at the lower right lets you choose which symbol
view (plan, right elevation, etc.) you want.

As you draw in 2D, the default reference planes are set at floor level
and one story above. A wall, therefore, is drawn one story high by default.
You can reset the defaults globally or locally and tilt the planes with
respect to one another. The local custom planes have priority over the
global settings and over earlier local planes that overlap. This is normal
in high-end CAD packages. But in tight spots, it can be annoying. Instead,
set elements to their own heights, irrespective of planes. The most difficult
places where planes tumble into one anotherroofs and stairsare
generated with automatic modules. Those modules are among the best I've
seen in full-featured CAD packages, although you must design roof frames,
rafters, and roofs in separate modules.

You can link symbolsfor example, a door to a handle symbol or to
a wall switch symbol. And when you start to draw a room, you can have
it pick up the wall specs from adjacent rooms, even when the adjacent
rooms are drawn in different files and aren't "adjacent" on
the screen. A dazzling number of engineering add-ons aid structural work.

Figure 8. One of dozens of human figure sketches
in 2D available.

File translation has always been an Allplan strong point. It imports
and exports DXF and DWG (Release 122000), MicroStation DGN, Allklima
ESS, and IFC. Allplan also imports HPGL/2 and Spirit files. We found the
imports to be of high quality. AutoCAD objects come in with lack of "intelligence"
but in highly editable form. Allplan provides excellent control over DXF
scaling. About the only things that didn't import cleanly were bitmaps
from 2D DXF/DWG files, but you can bring those in separately. Allplan
translates uncompressed BMP bitmaps and all major flavors of TIFF into
compressed RLC/RLE bitmaps.

Allplan had a major file format change of its own when v15 was introduced,
but there is no change from v15 to v16.

Wrinkles to watch for
Allplan uses Microsoft Data Access for ODBC and installs it if it is not
already on your computer. MDAC (Microsoft Data Access Components) can
clash with SQL Server 7.0 thanks to network clustering issues that have
nothing to do with Allplan. But if you are also running SQL Server, your
technical support people should pay close attention to the issues laid
out in Microsoft's documentation.

Figure 9. Allplan converts drawing entities
to symbols.

Allplan allows unlimited Undo operations, but only until the file is
saved. This happens automatically after a preset number of tool switches
and also when you export data and switch to a different drawing file or
to the Plot Layout module.

Most windows lack functional minimize, full/part screen, and close buttons
(underscore, X, and open boxes) at the upper right corner. Allplan usually
replaces these with UNIX-like command boxes at the lower right.

Don't get accustomed to using the middle mouse button to snap new elements
to old. This linear snap works fine, but as the number of entities in
the drawing increases, you get a lot of unwanted snaps. Allplan offers
an almost endless array of snap methods to a point or grid of points
preset by drawing coordinates, to an offset to point or line, midpoint,
intersection, and on and on.

Figure 10. Checking symbol for door (in the
2D drawing, the door is at upper right corner).

When symbols are linked, subordinate symbols behave differently when
moved, modified, or copied than the main (superordinate) symbols to which
they are linked. That can be tricky. I linked a door handle to a wall
switch so that the switch always appeared on the same side of the door
as the handle. But which symbol was subordinate in my drawing? There's
no reliable way to know before you start copying.

All about Allplan
Allplan sells for $4,995. An annual service agreement ($420) covers all
point upgrades and various technical support options. With Allplan's lease
plan, you pay $199 a month for 36 months. At the end, you own the soffware.

Figure 11. DWG/DXF import dialog box.

Once you get familiar with its nonstandard interface, Allplan rewards
you with a multitude of tools to handle all aspects of AEC design. AllPlan's
support for multiple users and project management tools make it a solid
choice for AEC projects. Highly Recommended.

About the Author: Steven S. Ross

Autodesk Technical Evangelist Lynn Allen guides you through a different AutoCAD feature in every edition of her popular "Circles and Lines" tutorial series. For even more AutoCAD how-to, check out Lynn's quick tips in the Cadalyst Video Gallery. Subscribe to Cadalyst's free Tips & Tools Weekly e-newsletter and we'll notify you every time a new video tip is published. All exclusively from Cadalyst!Follow Lynn on Twitter